Carla Kirkland

The best cones are those filled with chocolate ice cream. The second-best—well, a distant second—are the ones you'll find on the Praxis Core exam.As you'll see in the following practice questions, you may be asked to calculate a cone's surface area (in this case, based on its lateral area and base area) or its volume (in this case, given its radius and slant height).

The ancient pyramids have mystified people for thousands of years, just as pyramid questions on the Praxis Core exam have mystified ill-prepared test-takers. You can avoid this dreaded curse by remembering two simple formulas for the surface area and volume of a pyramid.The first practice question asks you to find a pyramid's surface area, while the second question drops a pyramid on top of a cube, and asks for their composite (combined) volume.

Prisms weren't invented just to divide light into beautiful rainbows; they're also useful for inducing painful headaches when you're asked to find their surface area or volume on the Praxis Core exam.Swallow a headache tablet and try the following practice questions. In the first one, you have to find the surface area of a right rectangular prism.

You can think of a cylinder as a circle with attitude. If you encounter a cylinder problem on the Praxis Core exam, you can knock it down to size if you remember a few simple formulas.In the first practice question, you apply the surface area formula to a right cylinder. In the second question, you need to use the volume formula—and a little subtraction—to get the right answer.

Even when two shapes look identical, they may not be. For example, on the Praxis Core exam, you may encounter a question where two shapes look the same, but you're told they are "similar." What does this mean? What if they're labeled "congruent"?If you're not sure, the following practice questions (and their explanations) should refresh your memory.

If you encounter a right triangle question on the Praxis Core exam, you can use good old Pythagoras' theorem to work out the answer. In some cases, you'll be able to skip the calculations and solve the problem using the properties of common right triangles!Both of the following practice questions can be worked out using the Pythagorean theorem—but if you know your common right triangles, you'll be done before you can say "Eureka!

When you take the Praxis Core exam, it pays to have a well-rounded knowledge of circles—especially their area and circumference. In the following practice questions, you work both backwards (finding a circle's radius given its circumference) and forward (finding a circle's area given its radius). Practice questions A circle has a circumference of 20π in.

Interior angle problems on the Praxis Core exam are pretty straightforward—well, most of the time. As you’ll see in the following practice questions, it’s also useful to have a good overall knowledge of angles for the exam. The formula for the sum of interior angles for a polygon is where s is the number of sides of the polygon.

If you remember the properties of complementary and supplementary angles, this will definitely come in handy for the Praxis Core exam. If you don’t, check out the following tip and practice questions to refresh your memory. When two adjacent angles add up to 90 degrees (forming a right angle), they are complementary.